Future drug policy in the countries of
the former Eastern Bloc

Introduction

In this paper I want to draw some attention to a process
of drug policy formation that is now taking place in the countries of
the former Eastern Bloc and to discuss the choices these countries have
(or may be not have) in developing their drug policies. Their choice is
to conform to the long established policies that are the norm in the West
(policies based on drug prohibition),[2]
or to learn from the West's experience with these policies - and to look
for different solutions. Some of these different solutions will be presented
here, not as blue prints, but as normative criteria that may govern highly
diversified policy options.[3]

Problems with Prohibitionary Drug Policies

Western policies relating to botanic psycho-tropic substances
and to newly made "designer drugs" have been based on constantly
elaborated and extended prohibitionism.

In Western Europe and North America we have seen many years of this approach.
While there are differences between nations' severity in applying drug
legislation, these differences are not that significant. The exceptions
are the Netherlands, Denmark, and Spain - countries which have gained
some real experience in non prohibitive approaches to cannabis. Otherwise
full force prohibition has remained the established drug policy in most
of the world.

In Western Europe, prohibitionist approaches are well anchored. In 1989
the French set up CELAD, (Commission Europeenne pour la Lutte AntiDrogue)
a bureaucratic body under whose auspices national EEC member governments
cooperate to improve application of prohibitionist drug legislation. The
Groupe Pompidou, an earlier (1971) French initiative working under the
umbrella of the Council of Europe, still assists governmental experts
of police, customs, prison management, and epidemiology meeting regularly
for similar purposes as CELAD.[4]

The World Health Organization has created a WHO-Europe branch, with its
seat in Copenhagen, which, insofar as far as drug policy is concerned,
shows some moderation in relation to the most severe orthodoxies of prohibitionism
but has shown no interest in finding new ways for effective drug control
outside these paths.[5]
The United Nations maintains their large drug bureaucracies in Europe,
UNICRI in Rome, UNDCP in Vienna, and WHO's new Program on Substance Abuse
(PSA) in Geneva. Interpol, with its seat in Lyon, also produces a constant
pressure in the direction of prohibitionism and, as I will discuss, exerts
its influence in Eastern direction as well.

The American Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has its agents connected
to most American Embassies in Europe, and is, via its diplomatic status,
a formidable pressure group sitting very close to each national Government.
In Eastern European countries, DEA agents are frequently seen as genuine
and objective experts in the field.

Indeed, when the new Eastern European countries look for assistance in
the field of drug control, one of their few options is to go the specialized
bureaucracies in Western Europe and North America. But they will find
nothing there but people who professionally defend a "religion"
of drug control that has caused so much damage, death, and disadvantage.
Other than these large bureaucracies whose very existence is dependent
on the survival and spread of prohibitionist policy, Eastern European
countries may look for expertise within national drug control departments
where they will find a somewhat greater variation in policy outlooks.

In almost all European countries, lower and middle level drug policy
bureaucrats have been critical of what present policy is doing to drug
users, drug addicts, legal institutions, prisons, prisoners, levels of
corruption, and organized and unorganized crime. The group of cities that
signed The Frankfurt Resolution (among others, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Basel,
Zurich, Ljublana, Hamburg, Athens-Kalithea and Rotterdam, and in the Fall
of 1993, Baltimore in the United States), support a resolution that is
critical of prohibitionistic forms of drug control because it incapacitates
their cities. The resolution asks for decriminalization and depenalization
of drug use. One of the central statements in the resolution is that "Criminalization
is not only a barrier to assistance and therapy, but also forces the police
and the judiciary system to perform a task which they cannot fulfill."
Within government bodies individual experts are more and more weary of
prohibitionist forms of drug control. But cities like the ones organized
in the Frankfurt resolution (or anti-prohibitionist individuals or departmental
branches in national governments), are almost invisible vs the Governments
of the new Eastern democracies.

I would like to present the hypotheses that the development of drug policy
is a function of other, more important policies, on the current agenda
of contemporary politics in that region. For Eastern European politics
a main goal and motivation is to be unlike the former party political
system of communism. Market economies, pluralistic democracy, and parliamentarism
are some of the broad models for these countries. Drug use and (certainly)
drug addiction were virtually non existent on the agenda of the former
communist countries; or, if they were present, they had low status because
of the taboo atmosphere surrounding them.[6]
One of the important points of the political agenda in these countries
is ending this taboo of issues that could not be spoken about during the
past regime. But since these countries have not developed their own political
institutions or theories of drug use, they have no model of their own
that can serve as a point of departure to formulate drug policies.

But these might not be the only reasons for these countries to eagerly
look for Western models. The need for all kinds of material and political
assistance is important. Just as adherence to the criteria of the International
Monetary Fund for the reorganization of the economy, is the price to paid
for economic assistance from the West, so is the acceptance of the ideas
of the main prohibitionist bureaucracies the price to pay for assistance
from the West in the area of drug control. Many of the new Eastern European
countries have had no Customs service. To set up these services, they
need apparatus and money, which Western countries or organizations might
be willing to give, if local institutions would play some role in the
control of drug flow from these new countries to the West.[7]

Western countries may look at the new Eastern countries as formidable
threats, perhaps even larger threats than they were during the period
of the Cold War. These new countries are feared as sources of massive
immigration and as major openings through which new sources of illegal
drugs might gain entry to Western Europe.

Although the basis of this latter fear is unclear (there is no shortage
of drugs on the Western Markets where prices are falling constantly) such
fears motivate Western Bureaucracies to visit the East with Missions of
Drug Control and to organize conferences about strengthening drug control.
Western interest in developing effective border controls in the new States
might be based more on the fears of large scale uncontrollable migration
(above all emigration of criminals[8])
than on fears of massive inundation with drugs, for which the West actually
has no or little market. If the new Eastern Republics could be convinced
to set up effective border controls under the perceived threat of drugs,
this might be relevant to a major western concern: controlling the outflow
of immigrants into W. Europe. The Western powers strong interests in making
the Eastern Republics adopt drug control policies are based not upon the
analysis and evaluation of options in the field of drug control alone,
but on other political priorities. Accordingly, their effectiveness as
drug control per se may be immaterial.

For the East, parallel interests might be the fear of uncontrollable
criminal growth. These economies are, for the time being, unable to provide
acceptable levels of wealth to their citizens, so large black economies
arise and threaten the establishment of legal economies. The development
of a drug-related criminal caste, who through large scale drug dealings
might become major earners of western currency, must be a real nightmare
in the eyes of eastern European governmental bodies. In Poland, for instance,
the existence of many experienced I.V. drug users and a black economy
of drug manufacturing that goes back to the seventies, has developed a
market for amphetamine type drugs. These substances are also exported
to the West, mainly to Sweden and Germany, and generate significant quantities
of hard currency in Poland (cf. Meyer 1992). The possibilities of criminal
drug trade in the vast area of the former Soviet Republics is also recognized
by the local authorities there.[9]

Other reasons to favor suppressive drug policy in the East are that,
very often, heavy and destructive patterns of drug-use co exist with political
and social chaos and political transition. One might assume that the current
and largely unsuccessful policies for diminishing alcohol consumption
will attract a lot of attention to the use of illegal drugs, which can
be given the symbolic function of being even more of a danger than alcohol.
Some countries report a rise in the use of illegal drugs as a result of
alcohol suppression, (e.g.Latvia),[10]
and,in Poland, home made opiates are reported to be cheaper now than vodka.[11]
Also some countries, notably Hungary, report very high levels of use of
legal hypnotics and sedatives among under-privileged groups, stirring
fears of a large potential market for illegal drugs.[12]
Last but not least, the Eastern European countries have a lot of experience
with suppressive policies. Although this type of policy is associated
with the old regimes, the technology and mind set for government agencies
to apply to the new field of drugs are readily available.

Alternative options in the field of drug control for the new Eastern
democracies have to take into account all of the factors stated above.
But one of the certainties of the drug future is that the East will compete
for the Western drug consumer's market. A side product of this competition
will be enlarged availability of still uncommon psycho-tropic substances
in the interior drug markets of the East. I would like to detail this
thesis a little bit further before trying to sketch drug control options
for the East that I believe would be far less destructive than the ones
advocated by Western governments and drug control bureaucracies.

When we look at cannabis alone, the former Soviet Republics could become
a formidable competitor for Lebanese, Turkish, Moroccan and South American
cannabis producers. According to the UNDCP mission to 7 former Soviet
Republics, just the three republics of Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia
offer 1.2 million hectares of wild growing marihuana that is hard to eradicate
or control. Since marihuana is the most important illegal drug of the
West, it offers attractive income generating possibilities to populations
who have little or no economic future.

The situation regarding opium is similar. Although the Western market
for illegal opium products has never served more than a few tenths of
a percent of the different populations, after the onset of Prohibition,
illegality provided these products with a price level that assures the
creation of intricate criminal organizations around them in the new Republics.
And since the former Soviet Union had highly developed education and all
the technical know-how for complicated chemical production, chemists and
pharmacists will almost certainly offer themselves up for the production
of illegal opium products like morphine, codeine and heroin, as well as
the illicit manufacture of "designer drugs" and prescription
drugs. Poland is already operating on the amphetamine market, and the
former Eastern German area's have been reported to produce MDMA for the
Western market.[13]

But the cannabis market is by far the most important. Accordingly, I
believe that the new Republics must avoid modelling their cannabis policy
after the dominant western example. Accepting the irrepressibility of
this market would leave the capacity to focus on more important criminal
areas. The Netherlands offers an excellent model for this type of policy
that could be studied by governments who are seriously interested in approaching
cannabis policy in a different way.

Further, the new Eastern Republics would also have to accept that there
will be some demand for other new psycho-tropic substances within their
borders, e.g. MDMA, and that such demand is just as irrepressible as it
has been in the Western democracies. A humane and decent policy would
not prosecute the users of such products, unless they commit crimes, in
which case they would be treated as criminals and not (mainly) as drug
users or abusers. Many of the legal systems of the new Eastern Republics
already leave individual consumption unpunished. In Kazakstan, drug abuse
was excluded from the new Penal Code as late as 1990, something the UNDCP
mission covertly regrets in its report.[14]
This permits the development of a drug policy geared towards harm reduction.

Success Potential of Prohibitionist Drug Control

I would like now to discuss some of the ideas Western modes
of drug control have to offer the East, by quoting and commenting upon
the remarks of Börjesson, an officer at the Lyon Headquarters of
Interpol, who spoke at the "Baltic Cities Expert Meeting on Drug
Supply and Demand Reduction" in Ala-Lemu, Finland in June 1992,[15]
where he spoke of the need for closer cooperation between law enforcement
authorities. The reason I highlight his speech is that it demonstrates
the kind of thinking that emanates from drug law enforcement agencies
in Europe today. His conclusions about the present situation in Europe
almost mirror the conclusions of the yearly INCB reports about the world
drug situation. According to Börjesson drug trafficking and abuse
is "the major social issue the world has to face to day..."
It goes without saying that the situation is alarming and the problem
will continue to rise. "Seizures are increasing, all drugs are easily
available and prices are falling..." It can clearly be stated that
whilst a demand exists there will continue to be production and supply...
Despite all efforts from law enforcement authorities the availability
of drugs increases."

Interpol neatly summarizes the effects of prohibitionist drug policy
since early this century: no matter how much Western European and North
American nations invest in a law enforcement approach to drug control,
the goals of prohibition remain out of reach, and, what is worse, produce
health, social, and criminogenic consequences of drug use far more negative
than they have to be.

The Interpol officer stated that: "Instead of concentrating all
our efforts to stop the flow of already produced drugs, we must try to
stop the drugs being manufactured".

This phrase illustrates the strategy behind the latest of the U.N. Conventions
(1988). It envisages stretching Prohibition one step further, from the
domain of drugs to the domain of chemicals needed to produce them, the
so called precursors and essential chemicals.

The problem, however, is that except for little used, complicated designer
drugs like MDMA and LSD, the essential chemicals to manufacture the more
classic drugs like heroin and cocaine are not difficult to produce. They
can be bought, even in large quantities, if not in the legal market, than
in the gray or black areas of the market. Complicated nuclear and missile
systems technology can change hands outside the legal arms trade, and
so can common chemicals.

Another problem is that many drug producing countries do not need chemicals
or need very little of them to produce potent drugs. In Poland production
of home made "kompott" (a liquid opiate used for i.v. routes
of ingestion) is completely based on widely available poppy straw and
normal kitchen utensils.[16]
And in the vast areas of the CIS Republics available for marihuana growing,
only labor is needed for harvesting, without any addition of chemicals.
This means that for the most important western drugs for illicit consumption,
cannabis, the U.N. Convention of 1988 offers only its anti-money laundering
statutes. And money laundering is not going to be the problem of the CIS
Republics and other Eastern Republics, where hard currency (illegal or
not), is badly needed to start a 'free market' banking system from scratch.

The philosophy behind this new phase of international prohibitionism
seems no more sound than the original one. In spite of the impossibility
of even a slight guarantee that increased Western style drug prohibitionism,
will decrease oncoming drug problems in the new Republics, this line of
drug control is still exported with great emphasis. A good example of
this is the mission sent by the United Nations International Drug Control
Program (UNDCP) to some former Soviet Republics[17]
in early 1992. This mission was aimed at, among other things, strengthening
"links of cooperation in the field of drug control," at assessing
"the existing anti drug legislation" and "Compliance with
the United Nations drug control conventions."[18]

According to the four members of the investigating committee in the new
Republics there was "an urgent need to draw their attention to
the U.N. international conventions and encourage them to adopt the provisions
of these conventions."

"The desire of the authorities today is to establish links with
the international drug control bodies or to strengthen such links"(p.5)

The Mission offered direct support to the new republics in the spheres
of technical laboratory assistance and legal assistance. In its report
the UNDCP Mission mentions providing a "model drug law" to each
of the new Republics it visited, models that, of course, do not reflect
any of the real experience the West has had with full Prohibition.

But the United Nations' bureaucratic orthodoxy is not the sole influence
on the new Eastern democracies. Hungary, for instance, is about to sign
the 1988 U.N. Convention, participates in the Pompidou Airport Group,
accepts aid in training Customs officers from the USA and police officers
from the German 'Bundeskriminalamt'. "The Hungarian Police forces
are in active working relationships with the DEA European liaison officers"
(cf. National Report of Hungary).[19]
Furthermore, the Budapest Police has a program of cooperation under the
name of "DADA" with the Los Angeles Police (well known for its
violent techniques of law enforcement).

Many of these observations that show cooperation with Western drug control
agencies are also true of Romania[20]
Bulgaria[21] the CIS Republics[22]
and, in a lesser degree, for the new Baltic States.[23]

But collaboration and importation of prohibitionist thinking does not
only take place in the realm of law enforcement and drug legislation but
extends to treatment philosophies. Latvia, for instance, has a Daytop
Therapeutic Community within its borders and the Russian Ministry of Health
is reported to have negotiated a cooperation agreement with the cult-like
"Le Patriarche" that (for unknown reasons) was ended by this
French center of ultra prohibitionism.[24]

Another recent initiative comes from the European Commission and consists
of the so called PHARE Program for Hungary, the Czech and Slovak Republics,
Poland, Bulgaria and Romania. With 2 million ECU the Commission wants
to help these countries against "increasing drug problems" stating
that "75% of all heroin reaching demand markets in EC member States
comes through Central and Eastern Europe and there is growing evidence
of drug trafficking and supply from the Southern Republics of the former
Soviet Union."

The PHARE program takes into account the input of drug related assistance
to the countries mentioned, particularly in the customs area.[25]
Still, 45% of the budget has been earmarked to support demand reduction
programs in the target countries.

Drug Policy as Seen From the Interests of the New Republics

The development of normative systems for new drug control
policies in the East should not be based on different principles than
those of the established democracies of the West.

The main core of such systems should be harm reduction, by which is meant
focusing drug control on minimimization of harm that might result from
drug use, in place of simply outlawing a particular class of drugs.

But, for the new Eastern Republics, such an approach is even more essential
and urgent than for the Western nations. Illegal drugs will be increasing
in use in these new democracies and be attractive to some as a sign of
modernity and belonging to new subcultures, and to others to help them
deal with the large and highly threatening social changes that are taking
place. Still others will use these drugs as a side effect of the economic
possibilities the drug trade offers. Illicit drug use is a relatively
new phenomenon in most Eastern countries and therefore has the potential
(if handled improperly) to become a destabilizing social force in itself.
Conversely, there is no reason to fear that a lack of suppression will
create higher levels of drug use prevalence than without such suppression.

Due to the extent of economic under and retro-development, if drugs are
repressed massively, drug use and drug trade will assist in the creation
of a large and difficult to control class of organized criminals who will
exert serious power both financially and politically. This means that
it is in the interest of the new democracies to at least tolerate individual
drug use and allow the development of a non monopolized system of small
scale and competitive distributors.

Instead of investing enormous sums in general drug law enforcement (by
means of which they will worsen their situation considerably) the new
republics should consider investing in information campaigns that teach
people which mistakes not to make with the different drugs; which real
dangers and real pleasures these drugs may yield; and which modes/routes
of ingestion are safe when basic rules are followed.[26]
In this way natural resistance against abusive forms of drug use will
be strengthened. Further, these states should invest in highly accessible
and varied assistance options for those who develop problems in relation
to the use of drugs, perhaps along the lines of assistance with individual
alcohol problems.

Of course the best investment in good drug and alcohol policy are programs
that prevent mass unemployment or marginalization during the period of
adaptation to new market and political mechanisms. This is the area where
Western investments will be most fruitful.

The main advantages of allowing drug use under conditions of minimal
criminalization are that:

by doing so one might prevent the creation of large and uncontrollable
oligopolies of drug trade and production, as seen in North and South
America;

to prevent hyper-marginalization of groups that already are endangered
by being underprivileged. The dangers of such hyper-marginalization
and the impact of drug suppression can be seen in North American and
some European metropolitan ghetto areas;

Cannabis use and some forms of opium use are, at the moment, not culturally
alien to many groups in the area of the new Eastern republics. This
means that culturally accepted rules for their controlled use do exist
and can be built upon. Such rule systems are essential and should be
respected. Minimal or no criminalization would leave such models for
drug use control visible to others for whom adoption to these drugs
is new. Also, by leaving room for established (illicit) drugs, one may
prevent or slow down the introduction of new drugs and new forms of
ingestion that always need some time to become incorporated into and
to shape systems of individual control;

For some proportion of those who use (illicit) drugs in heavy amounts,
the difficulties this creates in their own social sphere is quite enough
to deal with. To add to these difficulties the strains of criminalization
could not only be considered unwise, but also as immoral.[27]
Moreover, criminalization will prevent problem drug-users from seeking
assistance in the early stages of their problems when they can be more
easily helped.

Law enforcement could be focused on criminal groups and individuals
that engage in highly organized crime. For instance, when drug distribution
is organized on a monopolistic scale, possibly coupled to other large
scale criminal activities, the economic power of such criminality is
more harmful. This means that law enforcement should be used intelligently,
to diminish monopolization of the drug market and any other areas of
potential criminal activity. Law enforcement in the field of drugs practiced
in other ways is bound to fail, as illustrated so clearly by the above
quoted Interpol officer.

Unfortunately, these arguments, although available to anyone, are rarely
seen in official drug policy documents from the new Eastern Republics.
The only conspicuous exception is Czechoslovakia, with a contribution
of the Prague Center for Drug Addiction that criticizes conventional drug
policies.[28] Of course,
it would be more elegant to transform the Penal Codes of the new Republics
in such a manner as to allow legal and fully taxable distribution systems
for all drugs to be established. But such a drastic change will be politically
impossible in the near future. It is within the capacity of the international
drug conventions, however, to give very high priority to attacking organized
forms of the drug trade and to give a much lower priority to small scale
production and distribution and to not prosecute individual use.

It would also be in the interest of the new Republics not to sign the
U.N. Convention of 1988. Apart from the fact that this Convention (if
taken seriously) will create a large, costly, and ineffective bureaucracy
trying to control a vast range of psycho tropic substances and other chemicals,
it will just add another limitation to rationality of action in the field
of drug policy. Of course a liberal drug policy that does not follow U.N.
orthodoxy will be proclaimed as against the interests of the West. The
hidden themes behind such exclamations might be xenophobia and fear of
uncontrollable emigration. Overtly, Eastern republics will be accused
of worsening the drug situation in the West, of allowing cheap drugs to
cross the Western borders, etc.[29]
One should not be surprised if a liberal drug policy, however profitable
for the prevention of drug misery in the new Republics, will be used by
Western powers as area of blackmail in relation to economic or technical
assistance in other fields. South American countries have been subjected
to such blackmail for years. We can expect the USA, France, (and possibly
the UK) to take a lead in this type of confrontation.[30]
However, one should just look at what these countries have to show for
within their own borders in the field of (succesful) drug control in order
to ask: "Who are you?"

Notes

I would like to thank Hans Jürgen Albrecht (Freiburg), Dagmar
Hedrich(Strassbourg), André Seidenberg(Zürich) and Helena
Valkova (Prague) for their comments on an earlier version of this
paper. Ernest Drucker (New York) was kind enough to edit the text.

These policies are already partly established (albeit at very different
levels of severity) in the former Eastern Bloc countries. Most of
them signed the U.N./New York Convention of 1961 but, for various
reasons, national legislation deriving from this Convention seems
not to have occurred.

See for an extensive overview of non Prohibition policy options
and some of their difficulties Ethan Nadelmann: "Thinking seriously
about alternatives to Drug Prohibition. "Deadalus; Political
Pharmacology: Thinking about drugs. Summer 1992.

In its bodies and committees countries meet and cooperate who do
not belong to the EEC and, in some cases, may not even belong to the
Council of Europe. Cooperation is organized on a non-committal basis
since the Council of Europe has no legislative bodies that bind members,
unlike the EEC.

WHO Europe is supportive of syringe exchange, which is anathema
to the main prohibitionistic force in Europe (especially France) and
has been anathema for many years to the U.S.A.

See e.g. O.Meyer: "Actual policy in the field of prevention
of addiction and spread of the HIV virus in Poland", Demosthenes
Mission, Council of Europe. sept 1992 p.1.
See also Martin Bojar, M.D.:" Priorities of the Czecholslovak
Health Care system" In: National Report of Czechoslovakia, page
1. Council of Europe paper P-PG/min (91) # 32.

The UNDCP/WHO Mission to Latvia published a detailed list of items
requested by the almost non existent Latvia Customs. Under the umbrella
of drug control, a complete technical outfit was requested: Items
on the list not only relate to drugs, but to technical equipment enabling
the Customs to do all its other functions, e.g. freight control, luggage
control,equipment to detect arms,radiation, precious stones, metals
and explosives. Even basic communication equipment is on the list
of requested items. Report on a joint UNDCP/WHO Mission to Latvia,
1-3 June 1992, UNDCP 1992. annex III.

Finnish prisons already have a high proportion of Russian criminals
(Börjesson,1992 cf note 14). In The Netherlands and Germany Yugaslavian
criminals are associated to violent criminality.

"Narcobusiness, having become one of the branches of the
'shadow economy', constitutes a destabilizing threat to the economy
of the country and aggravates the criminogeneous situation".
Cf National Report of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, page
1. Council of Europe,P-PG/Min (91) #31.

One of the alleged reasons for a rise in the number of "drug
addicts" is the anti alcohol campaign since 1985 which made alcohol
beverages difficult to obtain. Report on a joint UNDCP/WHO Mission
to Latvia, 1-3 June 1992, UNDCP 1992. page 3.

Cf. National Report of Hungary, p.5, prepared for the 1st Pan-European
Ministerial Conference on Cooperation on illicit drug abuse problems,
Oslo may 1991. Council of Europe, P-PG/Min (91) #19.

A Swiss MDMA distributor and user who wants to remain anonymous
told me in 1990 about his "excellent" Eastern German MDMA
sources. And according to several press mentionings in the Netherlands
in january 1993 Latvia seems also to be producing MDMA for the Western
markets in state run chemical plants.

Special UNDCP Fact-finding Mission in Seven Republics of the Commonwealth
of Independent States (CIS); 2 april to 2 may 1992. UNDCP Vienna 1992,
page 45.

Cf. the text of his speech in the report of this meeting, Ministry
of Social Affairs and Health, Finland,1992.

The Republics the special mission visited were Uzbekistan, Ukraine,
Belarus, Russia, Kazakstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgystan.

Special UNDCP Fact-finding Mission in Seven Republics of the Commonwealth
of Independent States (CIS); 2 april to 2 may 1992. UNDCP Vienna 1992,
page 1-68.

It seems to recognize however some of the merits of harm reduction
approaches by allowing syringes to be sold without prescription and
at very low prices. Cf page 21 "Drug abuse situation and demand
reduction policies in Hungary" International Drug Committee of
Hungary, Budapest 1992.

Cf National Report of Romania, Council of Europe P-PG/Min (91) #29

Cf National Report of Bulgaria, Council of Europe, P-PG/Min (91)
#25.

Special UNDCP Fact-finding Mission in Seven Republics of the Commonwealth
of Independent States (CIS); 2 april to 2 may 1992. UNDCP Vienna 1992.

The 1992 UNDCP Mission writes in its report: "The cooperation
lasted for one year after which, for unclear reasons, the Association
[Le Patriarche] stopped all collaboration." page 32.

EEC Commission 1992 PHARE Budget, Brussels nov 1992, AVH-ei- 400.

Such campaigns should not be blindly let loose on the general population,
but targeted on specific groups or age cohorts after careful market
analysis - as done by successful publicity companies.

Most heavy drug use is periodic and/or age related. Many pass such
periods unscathed when left to their own resources. One might conclude
that chances to survive periods of heavy drug use in the physical
sense and in the psychological sense are enhanced when such users
do not have to also compensate for the effects of criminalization
and bad quality drugs.
Chronic heavy use, although socially unaccepted and therefor epidemiologically
rare, is inevitable in any system of drug control. Although I do not
know of comparative research in this area, quite probably the epidemiological
magnitude (or prevalence) of chronic heavy use is more determined
by quality of social conditions than by system of drug control.

The game of shifting the responsibility of one's own drug misery
to alien countries, tribes or other minorities has always been very
popular among drug warring nations. American, French or Swedish, drug
authorities will never even suspect their own drug and social policies
as responsible for their own drug problems.

On the topic of drugs and Eastern and Central European countries
as early as the 1990 confidential report of CELAD to the European
Council Meeting (Heads of State of EEC countries) bluntly states that
"the Community will endeavor to introduce, as already occurs
in a different context for the ACP, Mediterranean and developing countries
of Latin America and Asia, the "drugs" priority into its
new bilateral co-operation instruments with these countries."
CELAD 126. European Plan to Combat Drugs, 10234/1/90; page 23.